Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

U.S. Federal Appeals Court to Hear Medical Marijuana Case

On Monday, lawyers for a 40-year-old Oakland, Calif., woman will begin arguing a federal appeal against the Supreme Court’s ban on medical marijuana, the Associated Press reported.

The appeal rests on a ‘right-to-life’ premise: that the woman, Angel Raich, cannot survive without marijuana, which she claims boosts her appetite and eases her pain from scoliosis, a brain tumor, and other illnesses.

“She’d seo tips probably be dead without marijuana,” her doctor, Frank Lucido, told the AP.

The case is the latest salvo in legal attempts to undermine Supreme Court rulings that have consistently come down against allowing sick or dying patients to use marijuana to ease their pain or prolong life.

“There is no fundamental right to distribute, cultivate or possess marijuana,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Quinlivan, who heads the government’s case, wrote in a statement to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Eleven states, including California, now allow the limited, medicinal use of marijuana. That has led to federal law enforcement officials conducting raids on “pot clubs” that distributed marijuana to patients living in those states.

However, in a footnote to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, Judge Clarence Thomas said legal questions remain on whether Congress can meddle with state law, or whether Americans do have a right to medicinal use of marijuana.

The ambivalence expressed in Thomas’ note is helping to drive this latest appeal, experts say. “A victory would affect people who are very seriously ill, facing death or great physical pain,” Randy Barnett, a Boston University law professor working on the case, told the AP.

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Carter-Led Initiative Eradicating Guinea Worm Disease

A painful scourge caused by a worm that burrows under the skin has been nearly eradicated in the developing world, thanks to an initiative led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Guinea worm disease is a water-borne illness that afflicted millions throughout the developing world just two decades ago. In 2005, however, health experts reported just 12,000 cases worldwide.

The disease is contracted when people ingest guinea worm larvae in water from tainted rivers and ponds. The thin worms make a home under the skin and can grow to over a yard long, eventually blistering through the skin and forcing the afflicted to seek relief in ponds, where the worm releases its larvae to continue the cycle.

Carter made guinea worm eradication a major goal of his Carter Center foundation back in 1986. He said he first saw the worm’s horrific effects in Ghana in 1988.

“My most vivid memory was of a beautiful young 19-year-old-or-so woman with a worm emerging from her breast,” he told the Times. “Later we heard that she had 11 more come out that season.”

A mild pesticide can treat worm-infested ponds without harming drinking water, but local superstitions and mistrust of Western-led intervention have hampered guinea worm eradication efforts, especially in Africa. Drilling wells, or teaching families to strain drinking water through special sieves, can also help stop the disease.

Relentless efforts on the part of the Carter-led initiative have brought results, however, and health experts are hopeful that guinea worm will be the first infectious disease eradicated from the planet since smallpox. “I don’t have any doubt that it will be eradicated during my active service,” Carter said.

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Kidney Drug Can Safel